The great and all-absorbing question now is what will next be brought before the Council after April 24. In the natural order the second part of the _Schema de Fide_ would come on, which is comparatively innocuous though abundantly capable of improvement. But is it not time to fabricate the talisman of absolute power, the infallibilist dogma? Then would the Council be in the fullest sense and for ever provided for and finished, and the master would praise his servants. Many will answer the question in the affirmative. The two modern Fathers, Veuillot and Margotti, strain every nerve daily for that end, and many of the most zealous French Bishops—as those of Moulins, Bourges, and Carcassonne, and the indefatigable Mermillod—have represented to the willing Pius, as I mentioned yesterday, that now is the nick of time, and that he may gratify the longing of his faithful adherents by placing infallibility in the order of the day. These Frenchmen consider that their Government, now occupied with the plébiscite, will not trouble itself with the acts and decisions of the Council, and moreover needs the help of the clergy. Amid the bustle of the plébiscite, they think the new dogma, and even the reproduction of the Syllabus in the twenty-one canons, will excite little stir or indignation, for the French can only embrace one idea at a time, and the Parisians only discuss one subject in their _salons_. Banneville has at last actually presented the memorandum of his Government to the Pope, as President of the Council, and with the intimation that it should be communicated to the Fathers. That of course will not be done, for both Pius and Antonelli are irritated at the paper. Pius is annoyed at the innermost kernel of the dogma being so openly exposed to view, when Count Daru says, “You want to hand over all rights and powers to the Church, and then by the infallibilist dogma to concentrate this plenitude of temporal and spiritual power in the one person of the Pope.” That is of course what the _Curia_ does want, but it should be uttered in pious and somewhat obscure phraseology, as the _Civiltà_ usually speaks, and not be called by its right name in this bold and naked fashion. Antonelli again is much displeased, because his favourite distinction between the principles in which the Church must be inexorable, and the practice in which Rome will graciously concede the very opposite, is met here by the inquiry whether the faithful are actually to be taught henceforth that they must believe what they need not carry out in practice, and accept as divinely revealed rules which they may without hesitation transgress? He had reckoned on a better understanding, on the part of the French Government, of the favourite Roman theory of infinite and inexhaustible papal indults and dispensations, and is glad that he need make no reply to the note which throws so glaring a light on the morality of the _Curia_ and its notions of duty and truth.